LAS VEGAS — Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) alleged in an interview with Jewish Insider this week that an unregistered spending campaign, to the tune of millions of dollars, illegally interfered in his congressional race to aid his neo-Nazi opponent, influencer Dan Bilzerian. Fine added that the money backing that campaign may have come from foreign sources.

Fine, speaking to JI on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition summit this weekend, said that the group, Florida First Action Network, spent millions on television and mail advertising attacking him without registering with the Federal Election Commission, as required by law.

No group by that name is registered with the FEC. A website for the Florida First Action Network provides few details, stating, “Florida First Action Network is dedicated to promoting American principles, supporting effective leadership, and holding public officials accountable to the people of Florida.” The website provides an address for a postal box in Florida.

“It’s completely illegal,” Fine said, emphasizing that federal law requires transparency in federal election spending. He linked the campaign to a Florida politician and attorney who was listed on the forms for the television ad buys. The attorney, Anthony Sabatini, was also paid by Bilzerian’s campaign for legal services. Fine did not offer specific evidence of a foreign nexus for the funding.

He said that this influx of outside spending allowed Bilzerian and his allies to outspend him 5-to-1, though Bilzerian ultimately lost to Fine by a substantial margin. The congressman said Sabatini and likely Bilzerian should be sent to prison for this activity, and has urged the FBI to investigate.

In an emailed comment to JI, Sabatini did not respond to the substance of Fine’s accusations and instead lobbed a personal insult about Fine’s appearance.

“We cannot have millions of dollars of illegal, anonymous money pouring into our elections. It’s an existential threat to our country,” Fine continued. “If they can do it to me, they can do it anywhere,” he said, adding that allowing such anonymous spending would open a door for American adversaries to interfere directly in U.S. elections and “own Congress.”

Fine’s race was marked by increasingly ugly and antisemitic rhetoric, including consistent antisemitic attacks by Bilzerian — including an ad celebrating Hitler — vandalism of a Fine campaign sign with a swastika and a man arrested for issuing a death threat against Fine on the morning of the primary election.

“It’s not often that you get to say you faced evil and you slayed it, but that’s what we did,” Fine said. “It was very unpleasant, I’m not going to lie. But what was important for me to understand, what I said to my kids, is that I was simply the vessel.”

He said that Bilzerian’s campaign was effectively against the Jewish people, rather than just against Fine himself, and that he felt like he was “taking the blows for the entire Jewish community.”

He said he was ultimately proud of the results in the race and argued that, despite Bilzerian’s 18% finish, racist and antisemitic gubernatorial candidate James Fishback’s 10% result is more reflective of the prevalence of extremist ideology within the GOP base.

He said that the outside spending supporting Bilzerian made a very different case than Bilzerian’s own campaign did — absent the open bigotry espoused by Bilzerian and casting Bilzerian in a misleading positive light while misrepresenting Fine.

“When you spend $3 or $4 or $5 million creating a narrative that’s false in both directions, it’s going to have an impact,” he said. “I ascribe the incremental 8% [difference between Fishback and Bilzerian’s results] to the $5 million worth of lies.”

During his speech to the RJC convention, Fine also noted that some of the same donors who supported Bilzerian have also supported far-left anti-Israel candidates like Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, describing it as an example of a long-standing “alliance between Nazis and Muslim terrorists.”

Speaking to JI, he called his race, along with the resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and primary defeat of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), proof that Republicans “deal with” and reject antisemitism in their ranks, while “Democrats celebrate theirs.”

He said that he believes that the future of Jews in America and the future of Western civilization is at stake in the midterms, and that the “Democratic Party is lost. And so if we don’t fight back, if we don’t win, we could go the same way. I’m very, very worried about the future of America.”

During his speech during the RJC convention, Fine also reiterated comments he has made in the past decrying what he describes as “mainstream Muslims” — whom he characterizes as those who believe in extreme Islamist ideology — which have previously garnered accusations of Islamophobia.

Fine argued that continuing U.S. aid to Israel — a subject that has become a point of debate among some in the Republican Party — is an America First policy.

“If you’re Israel you want to end that aid and the reason is because giving that aid to Israel gives the United States real leverage over the State of Israel,” he said. “The America First position, which is we like to have our tentacles into the world, is to continue to give that aid.”

He said that ultimately if Israel doesn’t want U.S. aid, it would reject it, but argued that maintaining the strong relationship between the two countries is good for the United States, allowing opportunities to improve weapons systems, share intelligence and more.

“We get so much out of that $3.8 billion [in annual U.S. military assistance to Israel] than we give by doing it, and the same people who obsess about this $3.8 billion don’t obsess about the $380 billion that we waste every year on other things,” he continued. “I think it’s in Israel’s best interest to stop taking the aid. I don’t know that it’s in America’s best interest.”

The Florida congressman, who has been strongly supportive of President Donald Trump and his administration and serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised the Iran war, saying he believes it’s going well and that the U.S. is making significant progress in destroying Iran’s military, constraining its economy and loosening Iran’s grip over the Strait of Hormuz.